Christine Elliott

All the contenders to lead the Progressive Conservative party are now against a carbon tax, pledging to either destroy their own party’s platform or conjure billions of dollars in cuts nobody will notice.

All the Progressive Conservative party’s leadership candidates are skeptical of carbon taxes, seeking support from party members who hate them even more, but their party is counting on billions of dollars in carbon-tax money to pay for its election promises.

Earlier this week, the Ontario government, which has been raining promises on the electorate for months, pledged to create thousands more long-term beds and increase the time devoted to direct care of frail people in health facilities.

Somewhere in Ontario this past year, a lonely person needed surgery to cure a painful condition. The patient had no support system, nobody to take him or her home afterward and make sure everything was OK for a few hours, as the hospital insisted.

Patrick Brown says he decided to support Ontario’s controversial health curriculum in the face of new evidence, according to his most recent explanation of his reversal on the issue — specifically that much of the opposition to it was homophobic.